As if to demonstrate that there are better ways to run an opera company than the NYCO’s ongoing fiasco, Fort Worth Opera announced today that they will present the world premiere of Before Night Falls, is by Jorge Martín in 2010. Darren K. Woods, the quiet genius who is general director of Fort Worth Opera, first learned of Before Night Falls in 2005 after American Opera Projects in New York presented piano readings from the then unfinished opera and set his sights on the world premiere after he workshopped the piece at Seagle Music Colony in Schroon Lake, New York this past summer.

Perhaps the most striking aspect to this story what is La Cieca is delighted to point out as the gay angle: Before Night Falls is of course based on the autobiography of the same title by gay dissident Reinaldo Arenas, and Fort Worth Opera just last season offered the U.S. “fully staged” premiere of Peter Eötvös’ Angels in America.

Gay-themed contemporary opera is obviously not the easiest sort of repertoire to sell to subscribers, and yet FWO thrives. Not that La Cieca wants Fort Worth Opera to lose their leader, but maybe a Darren K. Woods is what the NYCO needs to break its current jinx.

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